Rogue Luck
by Idrelle Miocovani
Summary: The Hoth Rebel base is on lockdown and Wedge Antilles just isn't having a good day, especially considering prankster Wes Janson is in the room, armed with a coin and a deck of cards.


**A/N:** This was written as part of the holiday fanfic exchange challenge at the Jedi Council Boards (it's basically the fanfic version of Secret Santa). Anyway, my request was for a fic featuring the Rogue Squadron pilots set during the OT and including a coin, an unused deck of cards and a conversation. This is what I came up with. This is my first time writing a substantial piece with some of the members of Rogue Squadron, so it was quite the experiment.

Happy Christmas, **DaenaBenjen42**!

* * *

**Rogue Luck**

"Heads!"

"Would you shut up?"

"No! Heads! Why?"

Wedge reached out over the table and snatched the coin as it spun, mid-air. "Because it's annoying," he answered tartly.

Wes made a funny noise. "You find most things annoying," he said, thrusting an open palm across the table. "Give it back. I was on a roll!"

"No, you weren't."

"Yes, I was! Thirty-five times that coin came up as 'heads', that's gotta count for something!"

"This coin," Wedge said, holding it up between his forefinger and thumb, "is the stupidest excuse for lasering your brain I've ever seen."

"Thirty-five times, Wedge!" Wes protested.

"Heh." Wedge put his booted feet up on the table. "Tell me again: _how_ did you make it into the squadron?"

"Mindless trickery," Wes said in a singsong voice. "Heads!"

A bright coin flew up in the air, flashing gold. Wedge watched it fall back down into Wes' open hand, his mouth open.

"How did you get that back?!"

Wes shrugged, grinning as he flipped the coin again. "Finders keepers!"

Wedge groaned. It would be a miracle if he survived this. At the moment, he was honestly considering that his chances outside this room were higher than staying inside.

The ice planet Hoth was, overall, an ideal location for the Rebel base. It was secluded, filled with natural dangers, and it was a very, very unlikely place to build a base. The chances of the Empire finding them here were slim. However, there were several major drawbacks. One: it was freezing. Two: the amount of freezing this planet did had a nasty habit of causing anything built on it to also, unsurprisingly, freeze. Three: as a result of this terribly mundane freezing process, the recently built and therefore still sporadic Rebel structures occasionally shut down, leaving them with minimal heat inside a select few rooms around the base and the unfortunate circumstances of being locked inside said rooms. This was currently how Wedge found himself. The alarm had gone off and he, Wes, Hobbie and Dak had rushed inside. They were now stuck together until the systems re-started.

Which, admittedly, could take awhile.

At least they were in a rec room of sorts. There were a few things that could keep them occupied; unfortunately, they all seemed to be broken. Apart from the table and chairs, there really wasn't anything here except Wes' coin and a deck of cards – and the sound of their own voices.

"Heads!"

"Remind me to never bet against you, Wes," Hobbie commented from across the room where he was giving his boots an in-depth and very slow examination. "With your luck you could challenge Han Solo."

"And become the next captain of the _Millennium Falcon_?" Wes said with a grin. "Heads!"

Hobbie yawned. "Sure, why not?"

"Why you would want to be the _Falcon's_ captain, I have no idea," Wedge grunted. "The ship's a flying hunk of dilapidated junk if you ask me. She would fall apart as soon as you set foot in her – though I wouldn't put it past Solo for sabotaging the ship before handing her over."

"Yeah," Hobbie said with a snigger, "but with Wes' luck, she would _never_ fall apart. She'd stay afloat through the power of sheer chance alone."

"Heads!" Wes called.

Wedge felt that this called for immediate head-banging action – against something preferably very solid and unconsciousness-inducing.

"Though now that you mention bets…" Wes' eyes slid over to the deck of cards, which sat neatly on the edge of the table. They looked as though they had never been used. "Anyone for a game?"

"_No,"_ Wedge groaned.

Wes shrugged. "Suit yourself. Heads!"

"Isn't the coin fake, though?" Dak said. "Double-sided or weighted or something?" It was his first time speaking since they had taken refuge from the paralysis-inducing cold. The newcomer, while an excellent pilot and gunner, was still suffering from a certain awe all rookies obtained when they first joined the squadron. Half the time he was excitable to the point of annoyance; the other half, he barely said anything at all and dissolved into a strange kind of quiet anxiousness.

"Hardly," Wes said. "Heads!" He threw the coin up in the air again and caught it between his palms. "If it were faked, it would take all the fun out of the game!"

"Then how come it's landed on 'heads' forty…" Dak paused to count. _"Forty-one_ times now? That's next to impossible!"

Wes leaned back in his chair with a mock air of arrogant casualness. "Not impossible – just very, _very_ unlikely."

The chair promptly tipped and Wes fell backwards on to the freezing floor.

"Why am I not surprised?" Wedge said.

"I knew that one was coming," Hobbie added.

Dak looked as though he wasn't sure if he should laugh or not. Wes, meanwhile, sprung up from the floor as if nothing had happened at all.

"Nothing to look at here, folks!" he said, holding out his hands as if in defence. "It was a deliberate act!"

Hobbie snorted. "Of course it was."

"Here, Dak—" Wes tossed his fellow pilot the coin. "I thought you might like it!"

Dak caught the coin with one hand and looked at it quizzically. "Sure?" he said.

"Why not?" Wes swiped up the deck of cards and began shuffling them. "So, Wedge—"

"I am not playing a game," Wedge grunted.

"I'm just shuffling cards," Wes said pleasantly. "Innocent until proven guilty!"

"Really, how long is that going to take?" Hobbie asked.

Wes scratched his head. "Hm. Good question. It kind of depends on the day." Resuming his shuffling, Wes began flipping the cards out at random until he had dealt two hands, one to himself and one to Wedge.

"You know," Dak said, "I don't think that's how you deal—"

"Eh, what does it matter?" Wes said. "It's all in the luck of the draw." He picked up the first card in his hand. "What do you say are the chances of the Empire finding us here?"

"Are you really going to place a bet on all our heads, Wes?" Hobbie asked.

Wes did nothing but wink heartily at him. Across the table, Wedge fumed. He was already having a bad day. He really didn't need Wes Janson to make things phenomenally worse.

Wes must have noticed his friend's expression because he quickly said, "Oh, come on Wedge, lighten up. It's just a joke. Nothing funny going on here."

"You know, there are a few things I've learned from you," Wedge said darkly. "One: everything's a joke. Two: everything is funny, even when it's not funny." He picked up the first card of his hand but didn't look at it. "So, what's the bet, Wes?"

"Hmm, let me think about this one," Wes said. He put on a mock, philosophizing expression, as if he were thinking deeply about what Wedge had just asked. "Twenty credits?"

Wedge slammed down his first card on the table. He glared at Wes for a moment and then did a double-take. He stared down at his card and then back at Wedge as light dawned on him.

"Why's the card blank?!"

"Because it makes for a more interesting game of chance," Wes said nonchalantly. He threw the rest of the cards down on the table, where they skidding across its surface, their blank white faces shining in the dim light of the rec room.

Wedge groaned. "Why do I even bother…?"

"Because it's more fun that way?" Hobbie suggested.

Wedge glared at him.

Dak was silent.

The supposedly locked door slid open. As one, the four pilots turned and stared as Luke Skywalker entered. He took one look around the room, an expression of absolute bewilderment on his face.

"What are you doing?" Luke said very slowly.

Wedge jumped to his feet. "Aren't we on lockdown?!"

"Um. No."

"Oh."

If Wedge had turned around at that moment, he would have seen Hobbie pass something that looked a lot like monetary value very subtly to Wes. However, Wedge did not see this and instead saw Wes skip by him, tossing a coin in the air.

"Heads!" Wes said jovially as he went by.

"Right," Wedge said. He sat purposefully down at the table and promptly banged his head against the surface.

_the end_


End file.
